As mobile terminal technologies develop continuously, users have higher and higher requirements on the entertainment function of mobile terminals, there is developed a screen-switching animation technology for mobile terminals, which refers to a connecting animation appearing when the interface of a mobile terminal is switched from the current screen to a next screen. In order to improve the user interface (UI) effect of existing mobile terminal, a great number of complicated screen-switching animations are designed in the UI.
Screen-switching animation technology for mobile terminals can be divided into two-dimensional screen-switching animation and three-dimensional screen-switching animation. As to the UI design of mobile terminals, two-dimensional screen-switching animation without a three-dimensional effect typically comprises: fade-in/fade-out by sliding, fade-in/fade-out by scaling, color gradient, image gradient and the like; and three-dimensional screen-switching animation, which refers to all the screen-switching animations having a three-dimensional effect, typically comprises: cube flipper effect, flipper effect and the like.
The essence of a three-dimensional animation is to calculate, for any point in a three-dimensional space, the position where the point is projected on a background screen. Being a special three-dimensional animation, three-dimensional screen-switching animation aims to realize a transition between two screens with animation, therefore, three-dimensional screen-switching animation refers to a three-dimensional switching between two screens. Three-dimensional screen-switching animation technology carries out a calculation on two input screens to output a series of frames and displays the frames on a screen at a given time interval, thereby producing a three-dimensional screen-switching animation. As the more frames are output in a unit time, the smoother the animation is, and the better the effect is, three-dimensional screen-switching animation technology, on the other hand, leads to a large amount of calculation. The common animation that is rendered in real time is drawn according to the flow shown in FIG. 1, in which frames are drawn and displayed one by one controlled by a timer. FIG. 1 is a flow chart illustrating the drawing of an animation that is rendered in real time according to the prior art. As shown in FIG. 1, this flow comprises the following steps:
Step 102: starting an animation;
Step 104: drawing each frame of the animation;
Step 106: displaying the frames;
Step 108: determining whether or not the animation has ended, if so, executing Step 110, otherwise, executing Step 104;
and Step S110: ending.
The three-dimensional screen-switching animation technology of the prior art for mobile terminals is typically achieved using OpenGL ES and various other animation libraries (for enabling the Step 104 of the flow above). OpenGL ES is a 2D/3D lightweight graphics library dedicated to built-in devices and mobile devices. Most of high-end (intelligent) mobile phones are installed with a special graphics accelerator chip to accelerate a three-dimensional animation, which has a high requirement on the central processing unit (CPU) of a mobile terminal (mobile phone), while middle-end and low-end mobile terminals (mobile phones) are not equipped with accelerator chips and are therefore incapable of accelerating a three-dimensional animation. Besides, because it requires a large amount of calculation, a three-dimensional screen-switching animation can only be played on middle-end and low-end mobile terminals at a very low speed, falling far behind the smoothness required by a UI design, thus, a three-dimensional screen-switching animation can not be realized on middle-end and low-end mobile terminals.